Musings about spinning wheels -- reproduction wheels (Midway)

There was a craze for Americana, and in particular, colonial-style decorating in the middle decades of the 20th century.   For those who couldn't afford proper genuine antiques, the market provided new-looking reproductions in the same or similar style.  Reproduction furniture in colonial styles.  Reproduction braided rugs.  Reproduction doo-dads.  Among the doo-dads that could be used to furnish one's rooms were reproduction spinning wheels.  Many were lovely, made from attractive wood that had been nicely finished.

Some, such as the Roxton made in Canada wheel I mentioned in a recent post, were completely non-functional.  But some were honestly patterned after genuine pre-20th century antique wheels.  And some of those actually were usable as spinning wheels.

Country Craftsman and Daneker are moderately well known among fans of vintage reproduction wheels.  Many Country Craftsman wheels are reasonable spinners.  Some Daneker wheels are, too, though from what I've heard, it's more hit or miss with them.

There were manufacturers of kit wheels, too.  A person would buy the kit and assemble the wheel him or herself, staining it or otherwise decorating it appropriately.  Again, some were functional and some weren't.  Ditto for spinning wheel plans, which were fabulous for the home woodworker but weren't always made by people who understood how a spinning wheel produces yarn.

This fondness for spinning wheels of an imagined simpler or more rustic past wasn't just limited to the US.  There are European reproduction wheels, too.

Also, I wonder about the genuine spinning wheel manufacturers around the world that were making wheels then -- how many were aimed at spinners and how many at decorators?

In general, reproduction wheels tend to be a bit cruder than the originals.  The details aren't as refined, and I don't know if that's due to the economics of making these or if it reflected the aesthetic tastes of the times (for simpler or less fussy decorating details).  The ones aiming at the decor market tend to use brass for the metal bits and the placement of hooks on the flyer (if any) can be a little hit or miss.

Anyway, in case it wasn't obvious where this post was going, there are a fair number of these kinds of wheels knocking about on the used market.  They show up at estate sales.  Sold on used doo-dad sites as "sitting in the barn for 20 years or more, and it was here when I moved in".  The sellers tend not to be spinners and mostly thought of these as decor.  And indeed, when I went to look at some of them, they rarely showed any signs of having been used for spinning.

In general, these wheels needed a solid cleaning after being in an unheated outbuilding for a few decades.  They sometimes needed a bit of patience to loosen up parts that were stuck either with grime or with the shrink/swell action of two decades of being outdoors.  They needed a new driveband, and sometimes new bits of leather.  Any distaff that was still with the wheel usually ended up being more ornamental than useful.  And of course they needed lots and lots of oil as I started to spin.

I did not acquire wheels that needed major repairs.  No flyer/bobbin?  Broken flyer or missing/broken flywheel spokes?  Nope, someone else could take on that project.  Ditto for wheels where the flyer/bobbin clearly did not match the rest of the wheel or were obviously non-functional.  I also kept to my very strict budget so I wouldn't be overwhelmed by all the enticing wheels out there.

None of these wheels had more than one working bobbin, and none had orifice hooks or other spinning accessories.  If they had a driveband, it was usually some kind of thick (and ostentatious) rope, as if to emphasize its spinning wheel bona fides.  ("It works!" they would say as they turned the flywheel and the flyer obediently turned, too.)

I do have a few of these vintage repro wheels, but only ones that can spin yarn.  They tend to be a bit finicky but are perfectly usable, and indeed, I do use them.

Probably the first I brought home was a Midway wheel.  I don't know all the history, but the Ohio company that made these reproduction wheel kits also put out a wheel called the Hallcraft wheel.  There might have been a few more brand names, in addition to wheels that were a bit of a mash-up.

It's fairly small, about 3' high and 3' long.  (This seemed tiny when compared with my CPW.)  The ratios are, I believe, 10:1 and 12:1.  It's a double-drive wheel.

This is what it looked like when I picked it up.

Here's another view, from a person who bought out some remaining inventory from the Midway Manufacturing Company and was selling newly-assembled wheels that were similar though not exactly identical.  The distaff is different and mine has darker wood, but they're very similar other than that.

One of my cats chewed on the distaff, alas, but all the distaff ever really did was tip over and fall off, so it's not like I ever used it.

I don't use my Midway very often, but it is a serviceable wheel that makes yarn without a lot of fuss.  What more could one ask for?

I am thinking about selling it, though, or at least loaning it out to a new spinner -- it deserves to go to someone else who is in need of a simple yet functional spinning wheel, and who would use it more often than I do.

Somewhere I have some of the yarn I made on this wheel, but I'm not sure where.  I mostly did small skeins of this and that rather than a large batch of anything..

I have other vintage reproduction wheels but those will be saved for future posts!

Continued doily dithering

Lavori 07/30 doily

OK, I've gotten as far as round 181 (really 182) on the Lavori 07/30 doily.  I've followed the chart but added the additional hex mesh motif in the middle of the hex mesh area.

Next round (183), another set of leaf tips joins the hex mesh motif.  I can do that round the same as the previous rounds, but I also have the opportunity to add yarnovers between the leaf tips and their neighboring leaves, similar to the way the chart had me do on round 173.

The decision I make will affect the next few rounds.

When I look closely at the photos in Lavori 7, it seems like this area has the maximum amount of binding and distortion.  So....  what should my approach be?

As charted (the incorrect way), round 183 has 8 stitches in the hex mesh area.  Round 185 and Round 187 have 8, round 189 has 6, round 191 has 2, and then leaf tips join again but it's all pretty straightforward from there.

One of the charts I drew (and have been following so far) does not add yarnovers.  Round 183 has 12 stitches in the hex mesh area (due to the extra hex mesh motif), round 185 has 10, round 187 has 6, round 189 has 4, and then round 191 has 2 and I've converged back on the same stitch count.

Given that the area will bind and distort when I block it, should I add more stitches so that rounds 187 and 189 have more stitches?  Or will it look stupid to have additional hex mesh motifs in that area, and also make it harder to converge back down to 2 stitches by round 191?   Round 193, which is labeled as 201, adds leaf tips again, which can complicate any approach that has more than 2 stitches for round 191, since I really do want to finish up the doily with the column of O-A-O (yo, sk2p, yo) between the outer fans (and leaves) for the final few rounds.

I will chart out a few possibilities now that I've reached this point and then decide what I want to do.

In other stream-of-consciousness ramblings, I made a knitting mistake in one of the pattern repeats, somewhere 2-4 rounds before round 181, in the area where leaves are growing from a stem.  Ugh.  Maybe I could fix it, but it's in a spot where there are lots of yarnovers, k-tbls, single decreases, and double decreases.  Chances are high that I'd make things a lot worse if I tried.  So...  I chickened out.  I left it alone and continued the pattern correctly on round 181, ignoring whatever was going on in round 179 or 177 or wherever it crept in.  Hopefully it won't be too obvious.  There will be a slight jog in the line of the stem in the one spot.  I don't know exactly what I did, but I think I did a twisted stitch instead of a double decrease and vice versa, low in the leaf where it's just separating from the stem and there are both stem stitches and leaf mid-rib stitches and the leaf's plain knit stitch(es) should surround the mid-rib but not the stem.

Sometimes I catch errors on the intermediate round, and sometimes I just tune out and knit without double-checking.  Most of the time, I can easily fix a problem even on the next pattern round because it's usually something pretty simple.  It gets trickier at places where there's a lot going on and it would be hard to build the section back up again if I drop the wrong yarnover or decrease at the wrong spot and various stitches run even further.  It's also complicated because this area is very scalloped due to the stacked increases and thus it's not always all that easy to follow the line of stitches from round to round.  I don't love this project so much that it needs to be perfect.  Heck, the design isn't perfect and we all know the chart isn't, either.

I am pretty excited to have only 20 pattern rounds left to go.  I think there are roughly 1100 stitches per round, give or take a bit, and it'll only keep increasing from here.  I'm glad I seem to have the stamina to do a 200+ round doily project these days.  Ten years ago I probably would have declined and chosen to do several smaller doilies instead.

I'm not sure what I'll do when this one is done.  Smaller doilies for a while?  And how small -- 50 rounds or 150 rounds?  Or do I want to choose another big one, where "big" is defined as over 150 rounds and probably over 200 rounds, or even over 300 rounds?  That's something to ponder as I eagerly plod my way through the next 20 rounds (and probably still close to 30,000 stitches).  The knitting is reasonably fun and I am genuinely happy about being close to done.  But it's still a lot of knitting.

Travel Shawl (Miami Vice shawl pattern)

I've finally knit all of the yarn that was reclaimed from the Daisies project and am now knitting fresh yarn from the yarn ball.  Yay!  So far there's no unhappy pooling, also yay!  I'm in the first band of the eyelet patterned part of the shawl.

More Travel Knitting (charity hat)

I needed a project that I could easily pick up and put down, no need to reach the end of a row or anything.  It's been a while since I knit a charity hat, so I started a new one.  It's in dark green acrylic (probably Red Heart) and is the usual k1p1 ribbed hat on 80 stitches.

Appledore Gansey

This is still coming along nicely.  I'm very close to the spot where I can start the underarm gussets.  I want to try it on the recipient to make sure it's not too big, too long, too short, etc., before I continue.  I'm nearing the end of my second skein of handspun, which means 325-ish yards once I reach the end.  The next skein I wound into a ball is about 125 yards.  Sweaters with fat yarn go faster and use less yardage than sweaters with thin yarn.  Not that this is necessarily good or bad.  There are trade-offs either way.  But I am definitely enjoying the speed at which the sweater is growing.

A Roving We Will Go (fiber fun)

I went to Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival with a friend.  We didn't have as much time there as we sometimes do.  So I think I missed some vendors I wanted to see.  Oh, well!  Also, we went on the last day so the selection was probably not quite as good as it was earlier.  There was still plenty available, of course!  And plenty of cute animals to admire, and sometimes even pet!

I was very restrained (probably too restrained) and only bought a few things.  My friend was also fairly restrained.

I got small batches (4 oz each) of a mostly-Romney roving in medium to dark gray, and a mixed Navajo-Churro/Icelandic roving in mid-brown.  I don't know if that's a cross-bred sheep or a blend, though I think it's a blend, and I don't know the percentages of each.  It  has lovely darker fibers (probably Icelandic outer coat) mixed in with the lighter.  The mostly-Romney is from cross-bred sheep.  The flock started out as Romney but over the years there were occasionally rams of other breeds introducing outside genetics.

I also got a slightly larger mixed Maker's Blend from a different vendor, of various colors of dark-autumn-toned wool with maybe a bit of alpaca.  It was packaged as a mini-bump, so I'm not sure if the colors are all kind of mixed together or if there will be some variegation as I spin it.

The Churro/Icelandic roving is whispering to me so I'll probably spin it up soon.  Chances are that I will do my usual default-spun 2-ply.  I'm not sure exactly what I'll do with the yarn since it's not going to be next to the skin soft.  A hat or a pair of mittens seems likely.  Or maybe I'll use it for weaving or something.

I also want to think about what to do with the Maker's Blend.  If it's variegated, then maybe I should do a chain ply (aka Navajo 3-ply).  Or keep it as singles and then ply it against something else, maybe.  Or keep it as singles, period, and use it that way.

Last year I got what I think was the same gray mostly-Romney roving from the same people.  It's already spun up into a lovely yarn.  It'll be interested to see how this year's roving compares.  That's part of why I stopped and bought stuff from these people once I saw their booth -- I knew I liked their roving from last year.

Here's a pic of the yarn I spun from last year's Romney-X roving.  I ended up with about 250 yards of 2-ply from the 4 ounces.  It was an enjoyable spin, very clean and easy to draft.

There are some other things in my fiber stash I'd like to spin soon. I've been eyeing them but haven't been able to decide what to spin first so nothing gets done.  Sigh.  I do want to have room in my stash for more lovely things by the time next year's fiber festivals start up.  Hopefully I'll settle down and spend time with my wheels as the weather continues its descent into winter.

It's probably about time for another post on spinning wheels...

I think that's all I wanted to ramble about today.

Sweaters, doilies, and shawls (progress reports, mostly)

This is mostly a progress report kind of post, which is very much what the current purpose of the blog is.

Lavori 07/30:  I decided to follow the chart as closely as possible, with one extra hex mesh motif in the middle of the hex mesh section.  This will take me through round 181 with no further adjustments.

There's a chart error/typo on round 173.  I think I wrote about it earlier.  But yes, given that I'm following the chart, more or less, there is a missing yarnover on the left side of the hex mesh motif.  There is a yarnover that will separate the leaf tips from the rest of the leaf motif.

There are also chart errors/typos on rounds 175, 177, and 179.  The second decreasing leaf motif, before the outer fans motif, have a yarnover inside the leaves.  They look like (skp, kX, yo, k2t) instead of (skp, kX, k2t), which is what they are supposed to be and what all the other decreasing leaf tips are.  X in this case is 7, then 5, then 3.  It's pretty obvious when you get there after you're over the first slight bit of confusion.  Round 179 has an additional chart error/typo, in the last of the increasing leaf motifs.  There's a missing yarnover -- it should be k2, yo, k-tbl, yo, k2, like all of the other increasing leaf motifs in the round.

I started another ball of thread near the beginning of round 175 (near the end of the second pattern repeat).  This one looks like it's close to a full ball, and the full ball was labeled as containing 500 yards.  Will it be enough to get me all the way to the end of the doily?  I suspect not, but I'm hopeful anyway.  The rounds already have roughly 1000 stitches per round and the number of stitches per round is going to keep increasing rapidly all the way to the end of the doily as the outer fan motifs develop.

I am confident that I will have enough thread to finish the doily, since after this final partial ball is finished, I still have 3 full balls (350 yards each) that I can use.  The remainder should be enough for another fairly large doily, or if not, then a few smaller doilies.

Travel project shawl:  I'm toodling along on the Miami Vice shawl.  It's not a half pi -- it's pretty much a full pi, though knit flat rather than in the round.  I've only done a few inches and already have over 200 stitches per row on the needle.  Oh, well.  I have 980 yards of yarn that will be knit one stitch at a time, whether the project increases stitches slowly or rapidly.  Hopefully I don't get any annoying stacking of the variegation in the stretches where the stitch count remains relatively constant.  I guess I'll find out!

Appledore Gansey -- still coming along nicely.

Hmm, I really could use another project.  Mittens or fingerless mitts?  A hat?  Socks?

And, because we're having lovely sweater weather, let me share a pic of a sweater I finished and then narble on about it for a few paragraphs.

Elizabeth Zimmermann Seamless Hybrid sweater (from handspun)

This is a sweater made from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Seamless Hybrid pattern.  It's one of the percentage-based recipes in her book Knitting Without Tears, though I used the version that is in the revised edition of Knitting Workshop.

It's called a hybrid because the upper area (above the armholes) starts out like a raglan and then transitions to a wide saddle shoulder.  There's also a back saddle, sort of like a yoke but not quite.

Hmm, I should probably take some better photos to show the details more clearly.

I knit mine from some handspun.  When I bought the roving bump, I was told it was "mostly merino".  I have no idea if that is true, but the sweater is definitely soft enough to wear next to the skin.  The yarn is a 2-ply in a dark maroon color with flecks of blue and purple.  The edges are garter stitch and the rest is stockinette.

There were a few things I had to rip and re-do since my initial calculations were a bit off.  No big deal.  There were a few spots that looked a bit odd until after blocking.  Again, no big deal, and I have enough knitting experience to not immediately assume the worst when things look weird before blocking.

On the whole, though, I'm very fond of this sweater and very pleased at how it turned out.  It's warm and comfortable and attractive.  I've already been wearing it this autumn.

I have several ounces of the yarn left, not that I have any good ideas what to do with it yet.  It might or might not be enough for a vest.  At one point, I was turning all my oddballs into socks, but I'm not sure I want to do that with a soft merino yarn.  So for now, I smile at it when I go stash-diving into the handspun stash.

Proper Knitting Weather

Autumn is here, with cool, wet, blustery weather.  We even had a bit of a thunderstorm last night as the latest front arrived.

I haven't posted for a while.  However, I have been doing stuff!  So here's another boring progress report on my projects.

Appledore-ish Gansey

This is coming along.  My gauge seems to be holding steady at about 4 st/in.  I have a few more inches to go on the body before I start the underarm gusset.

Here is a bad photo (my specialty!).  The color is way off -- the yarn is a nice dark forest green.  This photo is from a few weeks ago, and I've knit several more inches since then.

I rather like this phase of a project -- lots and lots of fairly mindless knitting.  I can zone out and just go around and around, stopping whenever I need to.  Of course I have to pay attention at the seams, but that's why I have stitch markers.  It's great for travel knitting as well as for something to do while I am in a meeting or watching a video, etc.

Hobbit Shawl

This is the feather-and-fan comfort shawl that has been my travel knitting project for the past several weeks.  The name of the variegated yarn's colorway is "Middle Earth", so the shawl become the Hobbit Shawl now that it's done.

It'll grow a bit if/when I block it, but it's a perfectly reasonable shoulder shawl as is.  I'm wearing it now, in fact.  I used all but a few yards of my 4 50-gram skeins of this DK-weight yarn, between 450 and 500 yards of yarn.

Now I need a new travel project, since the sweater won't be a good travel project for much longer.

Good-bye to the Daisies Shawl project and maybe hello to a new shawl project

I started this a few years ago.  It's the Daisies shawl, from an old pattern from the Heirloom Knitting website (Sharon Miller's website).  It was fun enough, though there's some slight inconsistency in the charting as it goes from the initial set-up rows to the sets of repeating motifs.

But I hadn't touched it in a few years.

So...  It's gonna be unraveled and the yarn used for a new project.  There's another old pattern linked through Ravelry that might work well for this -- it looks like a half-pi (or 3/4-pi) with bands of offset eyelets (not quite a faggoting stitch since the wrong-side rows are purled) separated by thinner bands of a more solid pattern stitch.  The potential pattern is called Miami Vice, by Hilary Latimer (from threebagsfulled).  If that doesn't work, I guess I'll try something else, right?  I don't plan to reskein and wash/steam the yarn to remove the kinks from being part of a knit-up shawl for a few years.  Hopefully that won't be too much of an issue.  If I have enough yarn left when I get to the end of the pattern, I might add a sideways-knit edging.  Or I might not.  My guess is that I won't have enough yarn left anyway.

The yarn is from Crazy Monkey Creations, a nice gentle variegated pink sock-weight yarn (MonkeyToes, a 100% superwash merino 2-ply yarn, in a colorway Christy calls Girly Girl).  I have 2 100-gram skeins of it, close to 1000 yards.

I might try the Daisies project again in the future, possibly using a thicker yarn.  But it requires just enough concentration that it isn't a fabulous project for times that require mindless knitting projects.

Lavori 07/30 doily progress (charting!)

I think, fingers crossed, that I might finally have a workable chart for the hex mesh area.  I will double-check the stitch counts one more time and then maybe give it a try.

This means that any errata I list will be more for the outer-fans or leaf part of the doily -- the entire hex mesh area is borked anyway given the problems earlier in the pattern.  I may share my chart for my solution.  However, there are a LOT of potential solutions.  I don't know if mine is the best.  Heck, I don't even know for sure yet if it's 100% correct.  I may still go back to the approach of following the chart (with one extra hex mesh motif repeat) and ignoring the issues until they can no longer be ignored, which will be approximately where the leaf tips get incorporated into the hex mesh around round 183.

I tried to keep the outer stitches aimed in the correct direction, to mostly have double yarnovers between decreases where possible, and to incorporate the leaf tips reasonably gracefully into the hex mesh area.  I looked at previous areas in the chart where the hex mesh is next to the leaves and the leaf tips get incorporated to see examples of how Niebling approached the potential issues.

There are a few spots where my potential chart fix has 2 fewer stitches per hex mesh section than the original/wrong chart.  Hopefully that won't be a problem.  I don't foresee a problem with the rounds where I have 2-4 more stitches than the original/wrong chart.  But who knows?  That whole area is gonna be a bit funky anyway no matter what I do, given all the stacked increases happening in the outer fans area.

I'm resigned to maybe having to unravel a few gazillion-stitch rounds if it turns out to be necessary to adjust my chart in a way that can't be done on the fly.  I don't like using lifelines because they are too much of a pain to pick up the stitches from, in addition to the hassle of putting in the lifeline and having it not distort the stitches in a way that's noticeable during blocking.

The current photo shows the usual wad of thread, so I won't bother including it in this post.

I'm looking forward to making actual knitting progress again on this.  I'm on the last chart!  The last few dozen rounds!  So close to done.  Well, if you don't count the number of stitches left to do, which is still way in excess of 20,000 and maybe closer to 40,000.  I'm looking forward to finishing so I can start thinking about the next doily project(s).

Weaving

Nothing new here, but what the heck, here's a photo of the initial Tia rigid heddle project that I was writing about last month.

I haven't started another project yet.  I'm thinking about what I might want to try and what yarn I might want to use.  Houndstooth or log cabin?  Rig up some string heddles and do twill?  Just crank out some random strips of fabric and sew them together for a blanket/throw/bag?  Etc.  I don't particularly want napkins or towels or runners.  Scarves are not that useful, either.  Rigid heddle looms are not usually recommended for rugs, though maybe they'd be OK for rag rugs.  I don't want to make handwoven clothing.  I'm sure I'll get inspired at some point, and then warp up something and get going again.

Etc.

I think that's it, for the things I write about on this blog.

If I have a chance, I'll try to spin a bit this week.  Next weekend is Oregon Flock and Fiber, and I might be going there with friends.  I don't need anything.  But serendipity is a thing, and maybe something will come home with me anyway.  I want to support my friends who are selling there, after all, plus the festival has all kinds of interesting things that one doesn't always see for sale elsewhere.  I like being able to support local vendors, especially the ones raising fiber animals and/or making these wonderful products available to us.  However, I'd like to feel like I'm more or less doing steady-state with my spinning stash.  I gleefully restocked my dwindling fiber stash when everything opened up after COVID and I'm still slowly working through those purchases.

Google is offering me all kinds of AI-assisted beta features for this blog.  I don't want any.  I like having a dead-simple blog format and prefer to keep it that way.  If any AI-crud gets inserted anyway, I'll do my best to disable it.  If I can't, then my deepest apologies.  Alas, I've been here on blogger long enough that I don't necessarily wish to switch blogging platforms, but I will if I have to.  Well, as long as I can find something simple.  No bells or whistles for me, nor any AI-assisted anything.  AI is relatively useless for the kinds of things I do and I hate the effect it's had on me being able to find anything accurate and reputable for my own various internet searches.